On Thursday, the first day of the new Brexit talks, British chief negotiator Lord Frost showed hope.
A day after Frost warned in a speech in Lisbon that the British are ready to blow up the Northern Ireland protocol in the Brexit agreement, something happened that London had not foreseen: Brussels appeared to be willing to lift no less than eighty percent of border controls. to delete. This mainly concerns goods with Northern Ireland as final destination. It is precisely these controls that have caused great annoyance to Northern Irish people over the past nine months, who feel cut off from the rest of the United Kingdom.
A sea border was necessary because a land border would endanger the peace on the island of Ireland, but a sea border also proved to be a source of unrest. While less than ten percent of trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland is destined for Ireland, and therefore for the European internal market. During a visit to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson a few weeks ago, Mark Rutte showed understanding for his objections. Despite French objections, the responsible European Commissioner Maros Sefcovic was allowed to lend a generous helping hand.
Brussels keeps insisting that Johnson knew exactly what he had signed for at the end of last year, while the British have always stated that agreements on paper are not the same as their practical implementation. Northern Ireland government figures would show that as many as one in five checks at the EU’s vast external border take place in the Northern Ireland ports of Belfast and Larne, a disproportionately high percentage. The British stopped introducing new checks in the summer, against the agreements of the protocol.
Tactics Boris Johnson
According to Johnson’s former top adviser Dominic Cummings, breaking the protocol was Downing Street’s intention from the start. At the time, the swift conclusion of a Brexit agreement was mainly a tactic, he claimed, to win the election, ‘to deal a blow to Jeremy Corbyn’. In the BBC current affairs section Newsnight prominent Northern Irish politician Ian Paisley Jr. claimed that Johnson had personally promised him a year ago to tear up the parts of the protocol that he did not like.
In the coming weeks, both parties will mainly discuss the role of the European Court of Justice. If it were up to the British, an independent, international body would oversee the protocol and not the judges in Luxembourg, as Brussels wants. The British also want people to be able to bring their pets from Great Britain to Northern Ireland unhindered. An EU diplomat told the British press that an agreement must be reached quickly, as France’s stance becomes tougher as the elections get closer.
The relationship between London and Paris hasn’t been this bad in decades.
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